Aerothermal Analysis of the RETALT2 SSTO Vehicle

Kurzfassung

The European space strategy aims at maintaining autonomous, reliable and cost-effective access to space. Reusability represents a possible approach for reducing costs and improving flexibility of European launch systems. In this framework, the Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies (RETALT) project, funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 program (grant agreement No 821890) and concluded in the last trimester of 2022, had as objective to study critical technologies for Vertical Take-off Vertical Landing (VTVL) Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) applying retro propulsion combined with Aerodynamic Control Surfaces (ACS) [1]. Two reference launch vehicle configurations, namely RETALT1 and RETALT2, were defined.